Asiana Airlines Inc said the pilot in charge of landing the Boeing 777 that crash-landed at San Francisco's airport on Saturday was training for the long-range plane and that it was his first flight to the airport with the jet.

"It was Lee Kang-kook's maiden flight to the airport with the jet... He was in training. Even a veteran gets training (for a new jet)," a spokeswoman for Asiana Airlines said on Monday.

"He has a lot of experience and previously flown to San Francisco on different planes including the B747... and he was assisted by another pilot who has more experience with the 777," the spokeswoman said.

Lee, who started his career at Asiana as an intern in 1994, has 9,793 hours of flying experience, but only 43 hours with the Boeing 777 jet.

Co-pilot Lee Jeong-min, who has 3,220 hours of flying experience with the Boeing 777 and a total of 12,387 hours of flying experience, was helping Lee Kang-kook in the landing, the spokeswoman said.

This confirms what I initially suspected from the start. Someone in the cockpit really screwed the pooch as in a rookie was in command and botched the landing. SFO is not a particularly difficult approach and landing but it has its quirks that can surprise a rookie and have the situation spiral out of control very quickly.

When an airline spokes person said there were 3 pilots in the cockpit with over 10,000 hrs between them and one had over 9,000 hrs that was a red flag as in 1 was very experienced and the other 2 were relative rookies.

In training? Most likely he was in training to learn the English Language to fly the plane & take directions in English from ground control. There are 6 levels to English language proficiency for pilots to master. He must have been at the lower end of the 6scale. This has been an ongoing problem w/Korean pilots whether it be Asiana or Korean Air

52
posted on 07/07/2013 11:08:01 PM PDT
by dswyndon
(haven't found a good one yet)

This deference to the chain of command resulted in several Korean Air Lines crashes ~15 years ago. As most of KAL’s pilots came up through the military, KAL identified the problem but was unable to wash it out of them.

In desperation, KAL brought in some round-eye pilots and safety men who did succeed in changing this mind set. KAL has since enjoyed a much improved safety record

"He has a lot of experience and previously flown to San Francisco on different planes including the B747... and he was assisted by another pilot who has more experience with the 777," the spokeswoman said

That is why we still have two in the cockpit.

Airliner Cockpit Concepts Mulled: Solo And Unmanned

Aviation Week & Space Technology Jun 24, 2013 , p. 20 Pierre Sparaco

Move to one-person cockpits could be quietly taking its first steps Printed headline: The End of Redundancy Do you remember Michael O'Leary's ironic remark about the envisioned one-pilot flight crew? Ryanair 's chief executive last year claimed direct operating costs could be significantly reduced by eliminating the first officer on commercial flights

I’m not sure if it was in “The Checklist Manifesto” or one of the Malcolm Gladwell books, but there was a Korean jumbo jet that crashed and killed all on board some decades ago because a problem seen by the copilot was not effectively communicated to the Captain due an excess of cultural deference to authority.

The book said that this problem had been addressed, but perhaps it hasn’t.

More than once, I have had to provide directions to CTA (Chicago) bus drivers to the location of next stop. In fairness, Chicago tears up streets annually to keep the wrinkles out of the union bosses’ bellies. Yet, a little pre-shift prep should be mandatory.

Maybe, but the captains doing the training tend to be pretty senior. Either way, there should have been plenty of total experience on that flight deck for a safe flight. I’m sure one area that will get a close look in the investigation is the crew’s use  or non-use  of crew resource management methods.

72
posted on 07/08/2013 8:54:37 AM PDT
by xjcsa
(Ridiculing the ridiculous since the day I was born.)

Then shouldnt the fault lie more with the check pilot not monitoring the situation closely enough and not correcting the trainee pilots error before it caused the crash?

Having never *flown* an aircraft and never having flown anything but coach (except on two occasions) I couldn't answer that.I don't have the first clue who's responsible for what in the cockpit of a 777.

74
posted on 07/08/2013 9:03:48 AM PDT
by Gay State Conservative
(The Civil Servants Are No Longer Servants...Or Civil.)

From the looks of it, that plane performed spectacularly. Cracked off the tail, belly-flopped on the runway and still intact? That is pretty amazing and testament to the fortitude of American-made Boeing aircraft.

The pilot has a LOT of hours flying the 737--but only 43 hours on the 777. One major concern of mine is whether the pilot--because of his unfamiliarity of the instrument panel of the 777--did not follow proper procedures for a full-manual landing approach and emergency go-around.

In fact, there is now questions on whether the pilot enabled an RNAV approach, which uses GPS data to guide the aircraft to within 20 feet accuracy in latitude, longitude and altitude (20 feet because of the much bigger GPS receiving antennas on commercial airliners compared to the receiving antennas on portable GPS receivers or your cellphone). Some have speculated that if the pilot had enabled an RNAV approach, the plane would have flown on the proper final glide path within 20 feet accuracy for a proper landing.

So are you willing to spend a $100-$200 more per ticket to allow airlines to fly around empty airplanes to all the airports they fly to so that pilots can build up what you consider sufficient hours in a given aircraft landing at given airports?

C'mon now. You really think that's the only option to fly empty 777s as a dry run? If so, there would be many more crashes.

I thot we got rid of that cultural krap in cockpits, ordnance disposal facilities, heavy machinery operations, surgical operating rooms, bomb fusing rooms and all the rest of places where a wrong move can be fatal about a half century ago? Do you actually suppose all four of these geniuses in the cockpit ( OK, I’m changing it to cocklesspit) flying a half billion dollars worth of hardware were so freaking hung up on the fine points of oriental etiquet that they couldn’t bring themselves to say something as simple as “get it up”? Hitting a San Fran Bay breakwater clearly is going to save a lot of FACE!

The Boeing 777 is one of the most technically advanced aircraft in service. Unless I have misread the published manuals this aircraft has more than one system monitoring each and every facet required in maintaining a safe environment. If this is the case, then why no audio/visual alarms notifying the pilots their approach was flawed? Any audio communications between this crew and the tower is void of any traditional alarms, until 7 or so seconds from a heroic touchdown that saved all but 2 souls. Am I to believe that this marvel of modern flying machines will not calculate current data, project out future points in time, and alarm those in control adjustments must be made before the point of no return is breached? At 7 seconds from demise, it seems the plane has failed to notify and bypassed any fail safe, installed systems to ensure no critical event occurs. I thought such aircraft would take over flying if a critical event is imminent. If this ability to take control has been disabled, then many alarms would be rings loud. But if this advanced machine is displaying safe information to the pilots, I would assume this would be the same information the safety measures are using to decide if auto measures are needed. This is troublesome to me. The only safety measure that kicked in is the shaking that occurs (stick shaker) that is directly associated to engine stall...but why didn’t other alarms sound, suggesting a stall was imminent?
This is information contained within the manual posted via the link:

Fault Tolerance is a term that is used to define the ability of any system to withstand single or multiple failures which results in either no loss of functionality or a known loss of functionality or reduced level of redundancy while maintaining the required level of safety. It does not, however, define any particular method that is used for this purpose. There are two major classes of faults that any system design must deal with. These are

 A failure which results in some particular component becoming totally inoperative. An example of this would be a loss of power to some electronic component, such that it no longer performs its intended function.

 A failure which results in some particular component remaining active, but the functionality it provides is in error. An example of this failure would be a Low Range Radio Altimeter whose output is indicating the airplane is at an altitude 500 ft above the ground when the airplane is actually 200 ft above the ground.

I fail to understand how a pilot can be hung out to dry without first showing how all safety systems and measures could be disabled, and all alarms keep at bay during all communications during approach. Help me understand what I’m missing.

As far as I’m aware, having pilots in training fly passenger planes is standard operating procedure. That’s one of the reasons for having co-pilots, so in this regard, the airline did nothing wrong as far as policy is concerned. If the trainee was failing to execute his tasks, the copilot should have stepped in.

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